Damaged cars must be moved from Barnegat site

Pinelands rules bar Barnegat site's use

Dec. 3, 2012

Written by

Kirk Moore

@KirkMooreAPP

Owners of an old sand mining tract in western Barnegat must remove flood-damaged cars from the property immediately or apply to the township and state Pinelands Commission for a change in rules, the commission warned Friday.

But the regional environment and land-use agency is allowing two temporary debris-management sites in the Pinelands, at old municipal landfill areas in Stafford and Little Egg Harbor townships. Those sites are being used to stockpile building wreckage and downed trees and brush, said Paul Leakan, a commission spokesman.

“We have one at Little Egg. It’s not a permitted use because it’s in the preservation area,” Leakan said of that site, which lies just west of the Garden State Parkway southbound lanes north of Exit 58. But it’s being allowed under the state Department of Environmental Protection’s emergency rules for handling millions of tons of debris from superstorm Sandy.

Massive trash trucks are a regular sight on Route 72 as they haul debris to a collection site near the Ocean County recycling facilities in Stafford. County Freeholder John C. Bartlett Jr. said the county used its purchasing power to hire national waste contractors and dispatch them to help storm-stricken towns clean up.

But private companies are not allowed to set up debris-management areas on their own, according to Charles Horner, an assistant executive director at the Pinelands Commission who wrote a letter to owners of the Barnegat property.

“Please note that the use of the parcel for the storage of storm-damaged vehicles is not permitted without prior authorization from Barnegat Township, the New Jersey Department of Environmentala Protection and the Pinelands Commission,” Horner wrote in the letter to property owners, Barnegat Holdings LLC.

The owners could not be reached for comment Friday.

In the letter, Horner wrote that Pinelands workers were told of the vehicle park by a Barnegat official. That kind of use is not allowed under either township zoning or the commission’s forest area rules, so the cars must be removed or an application made to allow for commercial use, Horner wrote.